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Pop phenomenon Cher has had one of the most surprising and long-lasting careers in American entertainment. Her run of hits and comebacks have continued to defy expectations, right up to her Grammy Award-winning song "Believe" and subsequent tour and HBO special. Cher's string of successes includes dozens of hit songs from the '60s onward, two top-10 rated television shows, a critically acclaimed appearance on Broadway, and a succession of award-winning films roles, the latest being in Tea with Mussolini. In this brand new book pop music authority Mark Bego tackles all the recent developments including her well-documented grief after ex-husband Sonny Bono's tragic death. Cher: If You Believe also includes the most complete discography ever of her career as well as a "boyfriend-ography"!

Based in part on interviews with Madonna, this biography focuses closely on her musical accomplishments, her pioneering work in rock videos, her adept manipulations of religious and sexual controversy, and her ability to constantly reinvent her image. Effectively recounting her career while giving equal time to her relationships, Madonna has be been updated with a new chapter that explores her personal and professional exploits in the nineties and beyond, including her latest romantic liaisons, new family, and multifaceted career. The result is a revealing, intimate, and unauthorized portrait of the greatest pop diva of our time.

In this astonishing memoir, the medium who was hailed by Hans Holzer as “probably the best in the world” offers extraordinary insight to readers to help them tap into their own psychic strengths, fulfill their destinies, and answer that “one more question” on their own.

For more than twenty-five years, Yolana has used her remarkable gifts to give hope, guide the careers of celebrities and politicians, connect loved ones who have passed on, solve medical mysteries, and even crack some of New York’s most high-profile criminal cases. Here she finally reveals the facts behind those illuminating readings, divulges the truths of her experiences with ghosts and the beyond, and most importantly, inspires readers everywhere to trust in themselves and in their own intuitive and spiritual powers.

Whitney Houston (1963–2012) was a superstar. Few in the world of show business reach the career heights that she attained with what seemed such ease. Her megastardom peaked in 1992 with the release of the hit movie The Bodyguard and the international Number One hit “I Will Always Love You.” The movie soundtrack still stands as one of the bestselling albums of all time. She won six Grammy Awards, two Emmy Awards, thirty Billboard Music Awards, and twenty-two American Music Awards, and amassed a vast fortune. Her death has shocked the entertainment world and her fans.

Whitney Houston! traces the life of this American icon. Here is her childhood in Newark, New Jersey, growing up in a family with a strong musical legacy. Her mother, Cissy, sang professionally with such stars as Aretha Franklin. Her cousin was Dionne Warwick. Share the joy as Whitney signs with Arista Records and the legendary Clive Davis and becomes an international star. Here superstar biographer Mark Bego offers a unique look at her family and immense talent, the secrets behind her years of erratic behavior, the truth about her tumultuous marriage to bad boy Bobby Brown, her mother’s desperate attempt to control her, her dynamic final film role in Sparkle (which will be released posthumously), and the events that led up to her tragic death.

Whitney Houston! will stand as a singular tribute to, and a revealing look at, one of the great superstars of our time.

A frank examination of Aretha Franklin, Mark Bego’s definitive biography traces her career accomplishments from her beginnings as a twelve-year-old member of a church choir in the early 1950s, to recording her first album at the age of fourteen and signing a major recording contract at eighteen, right up through her headline-grabbing 2010 health scare. Originally positioned to become a gospel star in her father’s Detroit church, Aretha had a privileged urban upbringing—stars such as Mahalia Jackson, Dinah Washington, and Sam Cooke regularly visited her father, Rev. C. L. Franklin. It wasn’t long before she was creating a string of hits, from “Respect” to “Freeway of Love,” and becoming one of the most beloved singers of the twentieth century.

This New York Times bestselling author’s detailed research includes in-person interviews with record producers Jerry Wexler, Clyde Otis, and Clive Davis, Aretha’s first husband, several of her singing star contemporaries, and a rare one-on-one session with Aretha herself. Every album, every accolade, and every heart-breaking personal drama is examined with clarity and neutrality, allowing Franklin’s colorful story to unfold on its own. With two teenage pregnancies and an abusive first marriage, drinking problems, battles with her weight, the murder of her father, and tabloid wars, Aretha’s life has been a roller coaster. This freshly updated and expanded biography will give readers a clear understanding of what made Aretha Franklin the “Queen of Soul.”

This is the in-depth biography of Bonnie Raitt, the Grammy-Award-winning musician whose career rocketed up in the 1970s, stalled in the 1980s, and resurged in the 1990s. Bego reveals how the Quaker daughter of Broadway musical star John Raitt and an accomplished pianist Marjorie became acquainted with the emerging folk and protest music that swept the country during her adolescence; he charts her swift transformation from a serious student at Radcliffe to full-time blues singer, her dependence on alcohol and subsequent recovery, her marriage to actor Michael O'Keefe, and the huge mainstream success of her watershed album Nick of Time. Furthermore, Bego details her collaborations with the rhythm and blues greats, her recent activism with the Rhythm and Blues Foundation, and her ongoing struggles with an often chauvinistic music industry.

In February of 1996, Joni Mitchell was honored by the Grammy Awards in two separate categories, which represent the two sides of her creativity. As an accomplished painter, her self portrait on the cover of her "Turbulent Indigo" album won her the trophy as "Best Album Cover Artist," and the music contained on the LP won the "Best Pop Performance, Female." Only months later it was her personal life that was in the headlines as news that the daughter she had given up for adoption as a teenager, had been seeking her birth mother. With all of this creative and personal activity in her life, Joni is officially back in the spotlight, and the time has come for a hard cover biography on this fascinating star.Including revealing information from exclusive new interviews, rare TV interviews, and several inside sources-Joni's friends, rivals and contemporaries-this book will fully examine this beloved performer from every angle, public and private. Mark Bego will also recount his own 1990s personal interview with the elusive Joni Mitchell herself. The book will include an examination of:·Joni's sudden role as a mother, in her 50's, as her daughter Kileen successfully finds her after over 30 years·The truth about her rumored love affairs with Crosby, Stills, Nash AND Young·Her relationships with James Taylor, Bonnie Raitt, Linda Ronstadt, Bob Dylan, Peter Gabriel, Judy Collins, and Georgia O'Keefe·Joni's rich catalog of music, and her place in rock & roll history

The Vietnam War was over and America seemed in the midst of a nationwide party. The self-proclaimed Me generation was flocking to discotheques, recreational drug use was high, and sexual taboos were being shattered nationwide. Then The Village People appeared on the music scene. Never before had gay sexuality been as up-front and in the face of America. The Village People struck a cultural nerve and fueled a craze that had them playing to sold-out crowds at Madison Square Garden. Even today, few adults could not at least hum the tunes to "Y.M.C.A." and "Macho Man." Because of the unique role they played in the United States of the late 1970s, The Village People are able to provide a powerful lens through which to view the emergence and development of gay culture in America. In "Macho Man," readers can travel back with one of the first gay icons in popular music, and a top pop culture biographer, as they describe this complicated process of change.

In these pages, Randy Jones, the original cowboy in the band, takes us inside the time period, the discos, and the new musical style that was in many ways unprecedented in giving a voice to a previously closeted gay culture. Assisted by Mark Bego, one of the most popular and prolific pop culture authors working today, Jones shows how the fast-lane rise, fall, and rebirth of this novel band paralleled activities across the last 40 years within the gay culture and gay rights movement. The work concludes with a gayography -- a listing of openly gay musicians and performers in the United States before and since The Village People - along with a discography and filmography. This work will interest pop culture and music enthusiasts, in addition to scholars in gay studies.